That starts with free long-acting birth control for young women who want it (70 percent of pregnancies among young single women are unplanned). Follow that with high-quality early-childhood programs and prekindergarten, drug treatment, parenting coaching and financial literacy training, and a much greater emphasis on jobs programs to usher the poor into the labor force and bring them income.
President Franklin Roosevelt relied on aggressive jobs programs in the 1930s. Let’s turn to them again for people who can’t find work in the private sector. These measures won’t solve America’s poverty problem, but at least they’ll give Hailey a fighting chance.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to see your neighbor get off the dole. Aligning and voting with the Republican party to do so makes little practical sense. The flyovers are turning red in droves for just this reason though.

To bad these middle and lower class voters aren’t also interested in reducing the corporate welfare and subsidies doled out to the businesses which have turned their corners of the country into economic wastelands.

Nobodyisflyingtheplane when everybody thinks someone else is getting all those juicy government checks, living the high life, sticking it to the man, making suckers out of us working stiffs.

Its not somebody else. Its the middle class. As it most likely should be.

With the caveat that anyone can use stats to show the picture they want to, here is the picture of the middle class benefiting from the money the government takes from their checks.

More than 90% of the benefits go toward working families, the disabled and the elderly. And more than half of all entitlement spending helps middle class Americans.

In 2010, those age 65 and older collected 53% of the dollars, while the non-elderly disabled received 20%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning group. And folks in working families collected 18%.

As for income levels, those in the middle — earning between $30,000 and $120,000 — received 58% of all entitlement dollars in 2010.

Working families are the main recipients of the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit, which are designed to encourage employment.

About half of food stamp and Medicaid spending also go to individuals in working families

When wage growth keeps up with cost of living increases, inflation (the magical invisible inflation we all see everyday, but economists and the government don’t) and corporate profit growth not as many people will need help from the government. Until then its nice to know that its there if you need it.

In a time of economic challenges, nonprofits have grown to meet the greater needs in our communities. Many services previously provided by the government are now contracted to nonprofits.

I’m not quite sure who the writer is taking a defensive stab at here, but I think his point is stronger rearranged this way:

When there are proposals to cut defense or other federal programs that fund businesses, Congress often protects them because those cuts kill private-sector jobs. Shouldn’t Congress likewise protect cuts in federal funds that eliminate middle-class jobs that provide health, education, opportunity, safety and culture for our communities?

…the truth is that many private-sector businesses receive tax credits, tax deductions, government grants and government contracts.

No one likes to call such things welfare either, but they are. One way or another nearly every citizen benefits from some type of welfare from the Federal or State governments.

Nonprofits are often subjected to the same streamlining forces of efficiency that for profit organizations are (especially when they’re competing with each other for government cheese). Why not encourage more of that ‘welfare’ money to funnel through nonprofits to the eager beneficiaries?